Paul Smith’s river of dreams

Columnist Paul Smith reflects on his late father’s prowess at using multiple flies while angling for trout

Lately I’ve been thinking about my father quite often. Dad has been gone a long time now, but I still miss him very much. I was only a boy of 27 when he passed away in the spring of 1987, just before trouting season.

It seems I think of him more each year, most of all when winter loses its icy grip. Then it’s time for mud trout fishing and nobody loved trouting more than Maxwell Obadiah Smith, my father.

Dad was born in 1912, came of age in the depression so he certainly hadn’t much in the way of expensive angling tackle to play around with in his early days. He started trouting with a simple pole, as long and uniform a stick as could be found and cut in the nearby woods. He told me he’d cut one early, do the peeling with a drawknife and then tie it to his mother’s picket fence.

Dad’s father died when he was just 12, so he was on his own with all this angling stuff.

Anyway, the pole would lose half its weight before he’d use it. It wasn’t modern graphite but certainly better than a green stick, like many kids used.

JOY IN FISHING

Fishhooks were valuable commodities, as were spools of stout line. Money was scarce, but my grandmother would always have a few pennies to spare for her son’s yearly stock of trouting essentials. I suppose she considered it a worthwhile investment because I’m sure they ate the trout that Dad brought home.

That was trout fishing in its purest form.

One might think it was about putting food on the table, a noble boyhood endeavour for sure. And, for some, that may have been totally or partially true.

But I know my father well enough to understand for certain that it was much deeper. Joy in fishing flowed through his veins. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, Dad found happiness casting a worm and bobber upon the water to entice a trout.

He loved eating trout until his fading days but he longed to cast and fish even more.

Cast, now there is an interesting word. The word cast comes from the Old English word casten. It means to throw in, to consider, plot, imagine and design. This led to its meaning when referring to a group of actors in a play.

What about a cast of flies? Have you heard that expression used? Dad used the term all the time. To him, it was three different trout flies that he would choose and fish at the same time. So, I guess a cast of characters makes sense because flies are characters, of sort, in a plot to catch a trout.

English, Irish and Scottish anglers typically use cast to describe their particular offering of flies. It’s more popular in Europe to use multiple flies simultaneously.

It really makes sense to me and I’ve been trout fishing more and more with multiple flies in recent years. I typically use two, sometimes a weighted nymph, like a hare’s ear on the point, and a classic soft-hackled wet as a dropper about two or three feet behind.

This works great in early season. I just strip it in slowly with the nymph swimming about a foot under and the wet just beneath the surface.

Later in the season I like a muddler on the point and a caddis pupa on a dropper.

Whatever works is best and I like to offer trout a choice. I don’t often use more than two flies.

OLD ENGLISH TRADITION

I suppose following old English tradition, Dad always used three flies in his cast. He’d have them tied up ahead of fishing time and store them tucked in envelopes that fit in his shirt pocket.

I have no idea at what point in his life he started using these casts. I can’t imagine it was during the Great Depression. Dad was 17 when it began in 1929 and 27 when it ended. I can’t imagine there being much money for flies.

I do know that he started fly fishing with a bamboo pole because he described to me the technique he used to use. It was much like the Japanese Tenkara style that’s nowadays becoming more popular as a back-to-basics approach.

I think, in Dad’s case, it was out of necessity: all he had at the time.

Dad eventually got a fly rod and moved along a bit, although he never did become very proficient in the casting distance game. But he always caught trout, more than me nearly all the time.

I can picture Dad fly fishing for trout like it was just yesterday, which it was definitely not. The last time we trouted was in the mid 1970s. But, anyway, he still practised that bamboo or Tenkara style even with a modern flyrod. He’d make a short cast, about all he could ever do anyway and then drag his cast of three chosen characters along the water.

His eyes were always peeled, on full alert, like a bird dog on a covey of ptarmigan.

PROVEN TECHNIQUE

Boy oh boy, could Maxwell Smith ever catch trout with that time-proven technique.

So, what was his secret? I honestly don’t know exactly. I’ll never be as good as my father with three simple wet flies, because that’s all he ever used.

Do you remember those cards of flies that would be for sale on the wall of gas stations? That’s what Dad used, the ones with the three-inch section of line already knotted to the fly. He’d buy the Black Gnat, Silver Doctor, Dusty Miller, Cow Dung and others I don’t recall.

I’m not sure if he used them in any particular order.

Anyway, he had it figured out.

I’ve often wondered. I’ve fished and tied flies, read books and played the game for 40-plus years since I last fished for trout with Dad. I’ve mastered slow sink lines and weight my flies just right to get correct presentations. I can dead drift a tiny pupa under an indicator dry.

Could I outfish Dad tomorrow evening by the outflow on Gull Pond? I wouldn’t bet much money on it. But I’d give all the gold in the world for that evening fishing.

Give a cast of two or three a try this summer. You may be pleasantly surprized by an old tradition.

Tie on a classic English wet for good measure.